By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 16, 2004; 1:32 PM
There is "no credible evidence" that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq collaborated with the al Qaeda terrorist network on any attacks on the United States, according to a new staff report released this morning by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Although Osama bin Laden briefly explored the idea of forging ties with Iraq in the mid-1990s, the terrorist leader was hostile to Hussein's secular government, and Iraq never responded to requests for help in providing training camps or weapons, the panel found in the first of two reports issued today.
The findings come in the wake of statements Monday by Vice President Cheney that Iraq had "long-established ties" with al Qaeda, and comments by President Bush yesterday backing up that assertion.
In testimony before the commission, CIA and FBI officials said they agreed with the staff report's assessment of the abortive relationship between al Qaeda and Iraq.
A CIA counterterrorism analyst who testified using the pseudonym Ted Davis said, "We're in full agreement with the staff statement," which he said did "an excellent job" of representing the agency's current understanding of the al Qaeda-Iraq relationship.
John Pistole, the FBI's executive assistant director for counter-terrorism, concurred.
That consensus, coupled with Bush and Chneey's refusal to stop asserting the Iraq-al Qaeda links does exist, has left commentators struggling for euphemisms to describe the disconnect.
"We don't want to call the President a liar," explained one network executive, "but there are only so many words in English for a man who persists in saying things that aren't true." The network in question has resorted to calling the President's assertions "poorly supported by the available evidence." Another described them as being "based on sources known only to Bush." A third simply simply prefaces each White House report with "Nonetheless…"
Nonetheless, the reality-insensitive views of the President and Vice-President have received support from at least one quarter. The Major League Baseball Umpire's association issued a press release today defending the right of the chief executive to "call them like he sees them." The release noted that umpires are routinely criticized for their anomalous and sometimes highly personal interpretation of the strike zone, and suggested that a "picayune insistence on harmonizing every last call with the mundane details of pitch location, much less such arcane ephemera as which third-world scoundrel talked to which crazed dictator, is pettifoggery at its worst. The so-called official strike zone is just a template, a blank canvas if you will, on which we paint portraits of balls and strikes, and if the President chooses to conduct foreign policy in the same way, then more power to him."
Asked for a response, an anonymous member of the 9/11 commission said "Look, if the President wants to call the outside corner an inch or two off the plate, that's one thing. But that WMD call was above the batter's head, and the terrorism pitch literally bounced before it got the catcher. God knows where Cheney's going to throw 'strike' three; I just hope he doesn't bean us with it."
A spokesman for Cheney simply said "Arguing balls and strikes is grounds for an automatic ejection from the national media dialogue."
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